Free Live Bait by Ted Wood Page B

I'd got up, showered, shaved, and taken Sam for a walk I called Fullwell, using our Mickey Mouse code. The girl told me Mr. Fullwell had remembered the address. She gave it to me, along with the name of the law firm. Howe, Stark and Payne, an establishment WASP outfit rich enough to have a floor to themselves in one of the goldmines in the sky down at Bay and King streets.
    I left Sam in the car, in a lot that charged by the microsecond, and rode up thirty-eight floors to their office. I'd decided what I would do is get a reading of this man, for his reactions. If he acted suspiciously I would tail him for a day or two and see if he made any contact with Tony or other known hard cases. It was thin but I didn't have many choices. Tony's record prevented me from trusting him right off. I needed some kind of confirmation that Straight was our man. After that I could follow him up. The police might have done it differently, but then they had more manpower to spare than I did. So I forged ahead.
    Their office had oak double doors with a discreet brass plate with the partners' names on. I opened them and went through into the kind of plush-carpeted hush you associate with bank vaults full of old money. The receptionist was an anexoria victim in the middle of a desk that resembled a flying saucer. From a quick glance I couldn't tell how she got into it, there was no flap or visible hinge. I imagined she put it on like a crinoline.
    I could see she was weighing me up. The tweed jacket was good, from the days when tailors gave discounts to Toronto detectives, but I had the kind of tan you don't get sitting in offices riffling piles of other people's money. She smiled a smile she had perfected about 1945 and said, "Good afternoon, sir."
    There was a ten-second pause between "afternoon" and "sir" and a long hungry pause while she waited for me to whisper my request. By then she was beginning to realize that I was not one of their usual business clients. I was a special case.
    I looked at her for a few more seconds without speaking. She was waiting for deference. Once she got it she would kiss me off without a prayer of seeing the man I'd come to visit. So I did what had to be done. Speaking curtly I told her, "I've got a message for Cy Straight."
    She was startled. I could tell that everybody in this place was a Mister. She fiddled with her neckline. "Mr. Straight is busy."
    "Yeah, well I'll wait then." I looked around for a chair and moved to it, my feet honestly swishing through the depth of that carpet.
    She was in full flight now. "Sir," she called. And when I didn't respond at once, "Si-irrr!"
    I sat down and picked up last month's Fortune. "Me?" I asked.
    She waved both hands in a tiny, anxious motion, like a kid smoothing down her ruffled dress. "I must have your name. People can't just walk in off the street and expect to see Mr. Straight."
    "Yeah, well okay, tell him a friend of Tony's is out front." To someone like her, used to the hushed whisper school of conversation, I must have sounded like a drunk in church. She stared at me with her mouth open. "Tony," I repeated, and flipped the magazine open to a piece on commodities.
    She still didn't answer. Her mouth was working but her brain hadn't taken up the slack. I flopped the magazine back on the glass-topped table and mimed picking up and dialling a telephone. "A friend of Tony's is here to see you," I said and grinned.
    The grin woke her up. She picked up the phone and dialled. She spoke into the phone, rapidly. "Yes, Sue, there's a, a gentleman out here to see Mr. Straight. He won't give his name. Says he's a friend of Tony's."
    She made Tony's name sound like a conundrum. There were mouse scratchings on her line and she looked up sharply. "Mr. Straight's secretary says she can't interrupt him unless she has your name."
    "Why not?" I stayed in character. It was not my favorite role but it was the only way I had to cut through the usual protocol and come face to face with